


Asleep, Awake, By Night or Day

by MsLullabies



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, Unbeta'd, cursing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-24
Updated: 2012-07-24
Packaged: 2017-11-10 15:05:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/467636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsLullabies/pseuds/MsLullabies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A slightly intense moment between two exhausted S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Asleep, Awake, By Night or Day

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd, because I don't know anyone else who ships this pairing. :(
> 
> Title is from [Waiting](http://www.poetry-archive.com/b/waiting.html) by John Burroughs.

“Sir, there’s one car left in the fleet, if you wanted to take it - ” Agent Coulson stopped half a step into the room that had been temporarily designated as Director Fury’s office, struck by the Director’s posture. Fury wasn’t exactly slumped over asleep, but he was reclining, his head tipped back against his chair, and his eye half-closed. The sight of him in almost-repose made a strange, warm affection take hold of Coulson. It also made him suddenly and keenly aware of the ache in his own feet, the stiffness in his knees, the weight of his eyelids, and the soreness in his hands and forearms, left by the recoil. “- home,” he finished.

It’d been a long couple of weeks. 

“Shouldn’t you be using it, Agent?”

Coulson smiled faintly through his fatigue. Fury hadn’t had five minutes of peace between crisis in the last six months, and now that five minutes had come, Coulson was gonna see that he took advantage. “No, sir. Just gonna cross some t’s and dot some i’s before I bunk downstairs.”

“Gonna be lonely downstairs,” Fury said. That was spectacularly untrue. There were at least 50 agents still on site and on duty, half of whom were no more rested than Coulson, and likely as not they’d be crashing downstairs with him at some point. That remark was just the lead up to - “There’s no reason why we couldn’t share a ride.”

Well. That was subtler than Coulson was expecting. Usually the invitations the Director sent his way were a little more heavily delivered, and substantially less work appropriate. Coulson usually called him on it, deflected the flirting with a line about communication between a superior and his subordinate, and Fury usually agreed with him verbally while simultaneously giving him a slow once-over from head to toe. 

Maybe it was the uncharacteristic subtlety, or maybe it was Fury’s exhausted posture, or maybe it was the long two weeks Coulson was feeling all too hard himself, but a whim seized hold of him, and instead of deflecting, and he decided to cash in. He crossed his fingers that he wasn’t putting too much weight on the last several months of teasing and eye contact held too long, stepped forward into Fury’s office, and shut the door behind him.

“No,” he answered, “no reason at all.” 

Fury straightened in his chair, and his gaze raked up and down Coulson’s body before he met Coulson’s eyes. 

“Call the car around to the southwest gate,” he said, his voice low and full of the best kind of tension. The southwest exit was down a stairwell, pretty far away from any elevators, and faced a narrow alley that came up sharp on the Amtrak warehouse next door. Odds were, they weren’t going to bump into anyone on their way out. No one would see them leave together.

“Yes, sir.” 

A hot thrill skittered up Coulson’s spine as he turned away slightly and pulled out his cell to call the driver. His business voice was so perfectly practiced that he didn’t have to try to hide his anticipation from the man, but he could feel it on his skin, making his fingers tingle and his hips shift as he talked. He’d emptied no less than eight clips of bullets in the last ten days, and still this felt like the most dangerous thing he’d ever done.

Turned out the driver was mid-order at Starbucks and wouldn’t have noticed even if Coulson was panting into his phone. Apparently Coulson had left him idling too long, and Hill had commandeered him for a coffee run. 

Coulson restrained his huff of frustration and turned back to tell Fury that it was gonna be a few minutes before they were on the road, only to stop short at the sight of the Director’s naked face. His good eye gleamed all the sharper next to the gnarled scar that covered almost all of his left eye socket. The little that could be seen of his left eye was a dull milk white color. His eyepatch dangled from his right hand almost like a piece of lingerie, and he met Coulson’s gaze steadily. 

Coulson swallowed hard, his throat suddenly dry. This wasn’t meant to be a casual fling, then. Fury didn’t wear the eye patch to spare the squeamish or unnerve opponents, and he certainly didn’t wear it out of vanity or embarrassment. He wore it because these things were private. The casualty lists, damage projections, and munitions inventories, those belonged to Director Fury; but the scar tissue was _Nick’s,_ and it wouldn’t do for anyone who didn’t know him well to see it. Whatever would happen between them tonight, it was going into the same vault with the way he’d lost that eye. Not life-ending, not glorious, something that would probably come to seem like a normal part of the background; but also indelible, and private, and theirs. And Fury wanted him to know it before they got into the car.

So of course the only thing Coulson could think to say about it was, “Must feel nice to take it off.” Fury - _Nick_ \- raised an eyebrow at him, but Coulson decided to go with it. He let himself smile a little as he approached the desk. “I mean, like your shoes.” He circled around the desk, perched on the edge, and rode his daring a little further, reaching out to touch Nick’s temple and rub blunt fingers over the slight indent the strap of the patch left in his skin. “Or your belt.” 

“Don’t we have a car waiting for us?” Nick said, but he closed his eyes and leaned into the touch. Coulson might’ve felt silly for the way his heart leapt into his throat, but he just couldn’t quite summon the embarrassment. Nick’s skin was warm against his fingers, almost feverishly so, but Coulson knew from prior incursions Nick had made into his personal space that the Director just ran hot. _I’ll probably end up kicking the covers off,_ he thought, and his heart started to pound a little. 

“Agent Hill needed a triple cappuccino. We’ve got about ten minutes to kill.”

“Mmm.”

He let his fingers keep rubbing slowly along the line the patch left around Nick’s head, and Nick kept tilting his head into it until Coulson’s whole palm and fingers were all but cradling his head. The increase in Coulson’s pulse must’ve finally gotten some more blood to his brain, because he also began to quietly panic about how to move things forward when the excuse of soothing the marks the left by the eye patch ran out. Now that he’d gotten his hands on Nick he didn’t want to let him go, but he shouldn’t be touching him even this intimately while in a S.H.I.E.L.D. facility. The only thing to do was retreat, but – 

Nick solved the dilemma by tilting his head even further, almost nuzzling into Coulson’s palm, before huffing suddenly. A furrow appeared between his brows.

“Alright, sir?”

“Yeah,” he said but he was frowning, and he sat up straighter, pulling away from Coulson’s hand. “Just stiff.” He rubbed at his own neck briefly, but then reached up and caught Coulson’s hand , still hanging dumbly in midair - a silent _don’t back away, stay here close to me_. 

Coulson couldn’t help his smile or his flush of pleasure at being wanted so plainly. “Well, we can’t have that. I need you good and limber.”

Nick huffed out a laugh and said, “How long has it been since you’ve done this?”

Coulson shrugged as he straightened up from his perch and moved to stand behind the Director’s chair. “You go for a regulation guy, you get regulation come ons.” 

That earned him a genuine laugh, but it cut off on a low gasp when Coulson slipped his hand just under the edge of Nick’s collar and dug his fingers into the knotted muscles in the side of his neck. He could do this, surely. It might raise an eyebrow or two if someone were to walk in on them, but still. This was a completely legitimate service to his boss, right?

“Right there…nnnn,” Nick half-rumbled half-sighed, and Coulson’s excuses faded abruptly into the background.

He drove his fingers in a little harder, moving them in expanding circles until he was massaging Nick’s neck from the edge of his shoulders to the base of his skull. For his part, Nick just tilted his head forward and let out the occasional low hum. 

It made for a hell of a rush, watching and feeling the indomitable Nick Fury turn to contented putty under his fingers. He could get used to this way too easily. Coulson glanced at his watch; they had a good five minutes left to wait, and his hands were hungry. He slid his thumbs up and down the back of Nick’s neck once more, and then pushed his hands a little further under Nick’s clothes, and began on the top of his left shoulder where it met his neck. At the first deep dig of his fingertips there, Nick’s low humming became a full, rich groan, and Coulson could feel it reverberate low in his belly. Nick quieted quickly and obviously on purpose (if anyone was walking by the door just then, they were screwed), but even with that as a reminder, it was all Coulson could do to keep from stooping down to suck on Nick’s earlobe (with just a little nibble, he had a feeling Nick would like that), or maybe the corner of his jaw, god, anything to get that sound again, that sound was just – 

“Director Fury?”

\- the most godawful, asinine, unwelcome sound he’d ever heard, goddamn bullshit fucking asshole shitforbrains goddammit.

“Go for Fury.” Nick lifted his head and Coulson’s hands slipped out from under his shirt as he sat up straight again.

Coulson went back around the front of the desk and didn’t hear the rest of the call himself. It was Agent Hill’s voice and she didn’t call the Director unnecessarily. He pulled out his phone and texted “CANCEL” to the driver, and maybe stabbed the send button a bit hard, but that all he needed to compose himself. He was not gonna make a big deal out of this. There would be other opportunities. For now it was business as usual. It might be a little more difficult to shrug off the teasing now that he had seen that there was something real behind it, though.

When he looked back up again, Fury had his eye patch back on and was tugging at his clothes, straightening the rumples left by Coulson’s hands. 

“Hill needs us on level 2,” Fury said, stepping out from behind his desk.

_I just had my hand down your shirt,_ Coulson thought, but what he said was, “Yes, sir,” and turned for the door.

“Coulson.” 

Coulson turned around just as Fury took one more step towards him, in his space and close enough for Coulson to smell the leather of his duster and feel the heat coming off of him. His eye seemed to be looking straight through Coulson’s clothes and body, observing and desiring something deeper, something less tangible, but more important. 

…God. It was nothing the Director hadn’t done before, but yeah. Harder to ignore now.

“We are gonna get our moment, Agent.” 

His voice was warm with promise, and was accompanied by the lightest of touches, just the bare ghost of the edge of Fury’s knuckles sliding along Coulson’s jaw. It was gone almost instantly, as if Nick just couldn’t help himself for a split second there, and god, Coulson’s whole face just ached to kiss him. 

“Yeah, Boss,” he murmured. 

They looked at each other heavily for another second, and Coulson tried his damnedest to keep from counting his chickens, to keep his mind from filling up with plans and imagined touches. There was no telling what might happen to them in the next ten minutes, let alone the next few days.

He failed miserably, but still the moment broke. Fury took a step back, and Coulson turned around and opened the door to the rest of the facility.

end.


End file.
